Resumable conversations and passages

Sometimes you have a conversation that the user is likely to interrupt with questions. For example, a loan application conversation may have complex steps where the user needs to ask questions of your chatbot to understand how to complete the steps successfully. You don't want the user to have to restart their application every time they ask a question, so you make the loan application conversation resumable.

When a conversation is resumable, your user can ask questions and temporarily jump to another conversation flow without losing their place in the original conversation. When they've finished their questions, they can be directed back to where they were with a Resuming Quick Reply.

If you have configured actions for a conversation or passage that is resumable, those actions are triggered again when the user returns to the conversation or passage.

Both conversations and passages can be made resumable:

• A resumable conversation allows the user to jump to a passage in a different conversation and back again without losing their place. The resumability applies to all passages in the conversation but is only triggered if the user jumps to a different conversation.
• A resumable passage allows the user to jump to another passage in either the same conversation or a different conversation and back to the same passage. The resumability only applies to the specified passages and still activates if the user jumps to a passage in the same conversation.

When deciding whether to use resumability at a conversation level or passage level, consider:

• Whether it will feel more natural for the user to jump out and back again from any passage in the conversation (conversation-level), or only specific passages (passage-level)
• Whether the user will only jump to passages in a different conversation (conversation-level) or may need to jump to passages within the same conversation (passage-level).

Expiry times

By default, the chatbot displays Resuming Quick Replies for the conversation or passage for up to 60 minutes after the conversation or passage was triggered. The timer starts when the user jumps out of the flow of a resumable conversation or passage. After this period, the resumable conversation or passage is considered 'expired', and the Resuming Quick Replies for that passage or conversation are hidden until the user triggers the resumable passage or conversation again. You can configure a custom expiry time for specific resumable conversations and passages to control how long their Resuming Quick Replies should be displayed. 

If the user triggers more than one resumable conversation or passage, the chatbot only displays a Resuming Quick Reply for the most recently triggered resumable conversation and passage that hasn't expired. The chatbot can display a Resuming Quick Reply for both a resumable conversation and a resumable passage in the same message.

Make a conversation or passage resumable

To make a conversation or passage resumable:

1. Configure Resumability for that conversation, or configure resumability for the passage.
2. Add Resuming Quick Replies to all the passages that your user is likely to reach.